The power of #Wighthour

Yes really! ANY no matter how big or small, any business from the Isle of Wight, or any wishing to advertise to an Island audience needs to be taking part in #Wighthour (Times above).
It's an invaluable source of free advertising and a great place to find businesses and services you need... as mentioned by the lovely Veronica Pullen - Social Marketing Queen and Author of Social Prospecting for Twitter - on her website veronicapullen.co.uk/ <<Click to see! Her and her husband found 3 businesses they needed in one night all from #Wighthour

Got a bit of time you could spare?

I spotted this email recently and thought I would share it here in the hope we (#wighthour) might be able to start off the New Year with a good deed........

Hi! 

I am posting on behalf of Cowes Sea Cadets. We have a new building in need of some volunteer 'fitting out' workers! If you are a competent carpenter and would like to give some assistance over the next few weeks we would really appreciate it! We have some 'working party' days coming up on Saturdays during January, but can find plenty of opportunities to help at other times if you are able. Current jobs are fixing door frames, skirting and other slightly more technical jobs where a good knowledge of carpentry is needed. Other than the woodwork there will be many painting or tiling jobs to be done, but door fitting is our primary aim this coming month.

 

(Unless you happen to be an electrician or plumber! If so - we really do need you too!)

 

We have a good team of parent/volunteers on hand, with lots of tea and coffee and a friendly chat always available if wanted! Have you recently retired and feel the need to get your hands on some tools again? If so - we NEED you!

 

We are a registered Charity, and always looking for people willing to give their time to support some amazing young cadets who are working towards their citizenship awards and all manner of training schemes. Adult training leaders are also welcome to see if they have skills we can put into play as teachers for Cadet Nights. If you have time to spare and would like to pass on your knowledge and enjoy some great times within the Sea Cadet Corps, why not get in touch and find out more.

 

In the first instance, please email or I can be reached on 07846524036 during normal office hours. If you message me a land-line with your details I will happily call you at a suitable time.

 

Thank you for reading,

Jackie

Vice Chair of Cowes Sea Cadet Unit Management Team

Merry Christmas

Featured blog post..with Vintage Vacations...

Who are you? 
I’m Helen Cunningham,living in Ventnor with my husband Frazer and our daughter Faber. 

What do you do? 
I run a holiday business with my husband Frazer … we were the first to bring American Airstream holidays to the UK and have just had our 10th season(which seems unbelievable ….Time flies!)This has grown into our full-­time jobs with the addition of some wonderful buildings that we are lucky to have been able to acquire. I guess our USP is our love of ‘old stuff’, quirky architecture and muchos kitschos that shines through what we do and attracts like-­‐minded folk. 

Where can people visit you/see your work? 
During the summer months we are at out Airstream site over at Ashey most days … we also hold regular ‘events’ throughout the year at the Airstreams or some of our other locations which have proven to be a great way of meeting new ‘Island’ people. Details on the ‘Special Events’ page of our website. 

Do you have a website? 
vintagevacations.co.uk is our website address 
Facebook page is www.facebook.com/pages/vintage-vacations
and I am @vintagehelen on twitter. 

Have you always lived on the Island? 
I’m from London and my husband is from Edinburgh but we have lived on the Island for about 8 years now full time. We first built a small holiday house here that is now our all-­the-‐ time home. 

If you could have 1 wish what would you choose? 
Oooooh *chews pencil* could everyone just play nice please? Failing that could every summer be like summer 2013! 

Stuck on a desert island what 3 items would you choose to have with you? 
My photo albums, trusty sewing machine and an everlasting supply of Montezamas chocolate buttons.

If 1 of your 3 items had to be music what album or artist would you choose? 
The whole Nile Rogers back catalogue. #cheating 

Is there anything you would like to see introduced on #Wighthour? 
Maybe Q&A’s …. On odd things – maybe you have seen a peculiar sign or an interesting house on the Island and would like to know more about it? 

If you could choose the next person to be featured on the #Wighthour blog who would you choose? 
@ventnorartsclub …. I’d expect some interesting answers!

Wighthour

#Wighthour was a huge success this week with more new members joining it is getting more difficult to keep up! :)

This is actually a blogpost to anyone who follows me but who isn't a business taking part - or maybe not even a business at all. I can appreciate that during #wighthour I most probably feature quite heavily in your timeline/twitter feed, I hope this doesn't get too much that you feel the need to unfollow me, I am purely trying to support Island businesses and may just rt an offer or service from someone that may appeal to you! :)

Thank you all for your continued support! :) 

Sarah 

(@wighthour & @loves2crochetuk) 

Getting the most out of #Wighthour

I hadn't realised how quickly the weeks had passed doing #Wighthour but we have been going and growing for just over 4 months now slowly but surely getting more people to join each Monday evening with our mostly general chatter.  I spoke to a few members recently and they admitted not using #wighthour to its full potential and I did admit that I felt that at times it feels like it loses its way a bit (I love the fun chat so please don't despair) but that I feel that alot of Island businesses are losing out on a really good chance to promote themselves as much as they could with #wighthour. I appreciate that not everyone is especially twitter or tech minded so I am going to explain my idea behind #wighthour in very simple terms :)

#Wighthour

Using your business twitter account on a Monday evening between 8:30-9:30pm write a tweet describing your business/services/offers you do and somewhere in that tweet include #Wighthour (You don’t have to write the tweet to @Wighthour I will still see it).

I will retweet any business / useful/ informative tweet that includes the #Wighthour hashtag.

If you are promoting your business using #Wighthour then please retweet someone else who is doing the same, the idea being the more people who retweet each other then the more people get to see your original tweet and that will hopefully lead to more business coming your way.

To give you an idea of what I mean:

Imagine you only have 10 followers—you may think #Wighthour is pointless for you as ’who is going to see my tweet?’ but if you include #Wighthour in your tweet even if I am not one of your 10 followers yet then I will see it and retweet it to my 500+ followers  and some of them have 1000’s of followers so if they join in #Wighthour and retweet your tweet that I have retweeted then suddenly the answer to your question of ‘who is going to see my tweet?’ is potentially thousands of people!

I hope that makes some kind of sense! Please just say if you have any questions!

See you at #Wighthour

Getting to know you..

As a way of getting to know you all I thought I'd start this question and answer session...
Just 5 questions please leave your answers as comments!

Your names (First name and username/twitter name if you have one!):
Name of your business:
Type of business:
How long have you been in business:
Have you told anyone about #Wighthour/Will you?

1st #WightHour

Ok I will admit I did feel like I was waiting for a party to happen that no one was going to turn up to but thankfully in the first ever #wighthour I wasn't alone!!

It was slow going at first but I got a fair few tweets for the first night and I hope now that week on week it will grow with more and more island businesses following, rt'ing' and promoting not only their own business but also other local businesses too, with the idea/hope that they and others will do the same back!

These are the businesses that tweeted with us tonight and promoted us in the build up to #wighthour!
@emswindsor emmawindsor.co.uk
@Treetopthinking treetopthinking.co.uk
@BluelabelleIOW bluelabelle.com
@CareerLovingMum facebook.com/careerlovingmums
@bekenandson http://www.bekenandsoncowes.co.uk/
@iheartbuttonsuk http://www.iheartbuttons.co.uk/

Thank you all and hopefully see you all again next monday!

Don't forget to spread the word to help us all! :)

#WightHour